Conjuring Ghosts and Monsters
What were the ghosts and monsters that occupied your dreams and imagination when you were a child?
My daughter aged about 2 in mid-run. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2006 published here with her permission.
Trying to Get to the Other Side
I hear them quietly running around the house, stopping, a door opening.
Silence. I see them, the soldiers carrying guns invading our house. I get out of bed and tiptoe quickly into my sisters' bedroom. I wake them and push them into the cupboard at the end of their room. Cut into the floor is a trapdoor that opens into the spare room below. I drop down first. The soldiers begin climbing the stairs. Someone looks in the spare room but sees nothing. I hide behind a door. I help my sisters down through the trap door. They're wide-eyed with fright. My heart beats loudly in my chest.
I wake up just as the reflection of a car's headlights traces a line around my room. It was just a dream. The same dream I kept having over and over. I am 13 years old. My parents have separated, my dad has moved out and lives elsewhere.
I had this dream several times before it finally disappeared into my subconscious. But there are still things I remember about it. The soldiers. The guns. The running. Me trying to protect my two younger sisters from the invasion. It was an unsettling time.
Ghosts & Horror Stories
At boarding school, we tried to conjure monsters and ghosts. We made ouija boards from torn-up bits of paper and used a pen as a pointer. After lights out, someone would have a ghost story to tell or would hold a torch under their chin while looking in the mirror, trying to see if the devil was standing there.
Whenever we stayed at my granny's house, I had to sleep on a mattress on the floor in my auntie's room. She wasn't much older than me and had a talent for scaring me witless. She'd lie on her bed high above me telling long ghostly horror stories while I tried to tuck the blanket in all around my body. She'd tell me earwigs were going to crawl into my ears and eat into my brain during the night. Honestly, it's a miracle I ever managed to sleep at all.
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For this week, let's try to write about the childhood monster that occupied your imagination. The one you wished you could run away from. Did it hide in your wardrobe or sleep under your bed or spend every night behind the bathroom door? What is that image of fright in your head? Where is it coming from? How does your body feel when you think about it? What was your monster?
Write it down, write it down, write it down.
Let’s meet back here next week.
